UC Irvine

Many complex health conditions—chronic diseases, serious mental health issues, and highly-infectious diseases—necessitate monitoring and acting upon health indicators and daily behaviors. Self-tracking technology has value to individuals and public health authorities, supporting collecting and reflecting on data to better understand and manage health. However, self-tracking technology often falls short in supporting complex health conditions as it typically concentrates on single data types, resulting in people abandoning or frequently switching between self-tracking technologies. My dissertation demonstrates the advantages of tracking ecosystems, a technology ecosystem that integrates self-tracking technology with non-tracking technologies, over individual self-tracking technology in supporting complex health conditions.

My dissertation explores how people perceive and experience different technologies and approaches interact with one another within a tracking ecosystem to support complex health conditions across different societal structures. Individual layer: through an interview study on people's experiences with food journaling apps, I contribute a Model of Socially Sustained Self-Tracking, illustrating how self-tracking technology intersects with social technology to comprise a tracking ecosystem for supporting individuals' eating and dieting goals; Interpersonal layer: through an interview with pregnant people and non-pregnant stakeholders, I understand how people collaborate within tracking ecosystems for tracking and managing various types of pregnancy data in their everyday lives; Socio-cultural layer: By comparing survey answers between South Korean people and their counterparts in the U.S. regarding their perceptions toward contact tracing approaches, I examine socio-cultural factors' influences on how people prefer to have data collected in a tracking system.

Drawing from findings across three studies, I discuss the benefits and challenges of tracking ecosystems for supporting complex health conditions, suggesting future opportunities for enhancing tracking ecosystems. For example, one important aspect that surfaced in my dissertation is the crucial role of the preparation stage in fostering stakeholders' effective collaboration within tracking ecosystems. I therefore suggest future designs to raise people's awareness about their tracking efforts and facilitate the division of tracking labor among stakeholders.